THIS WEEK IN PRO CYCLING
Astana's Chris Horner win Tour de White Rock road race
Chris Horner wrapped up his first trip to BC Superweek by powering away from Matt Shriver and Andrew Pinfold up the final hill to win the Peace Arch News Road Race at the Tour de White Rock on Sunday.
Horner led the three-man breakaway with an attack coming out of a hairpin and up a steep climb on the last of 11 laps around a 10-kilometer circuit. Driven by Horner, the trio stayed away for all six laps of the shorter 3.8-kilometer route before he finally created a gap his last trip up the big backside hill.
“There’s just no reason to finish in a big group,” said Horner. ”It’s dangerous coming into the last corner, and in all honesty the first climb at the back you get a straight run into it, so it’s going to be really hard to get anyone off your wheel, so the best time to do it was after the hairpin because everyone is going to lose speed. We got a good split there and had a perfect group and just punched it.”
After watching the Symmetrics Pro Cycling team dominate BC Superweek by setting Pinfold up for bunch sprints, including criterium wins at the Tour de Gastown Wednesday, the Giro di Burnaby Thursday, and Saturday evening in White Rock, the key for Horner was splitting things up and keeping them apart through the final lap of the tough, hilly, 134-kilometer course.
“It always came down to a field sprint, but Andrew was just so fast,” said Horner of BC Superweek. “I’ve been over in Europe so I’m not familiar with these guys offhand and I was like ‘man, that guy’s fast.’ I thought maybe it was a tactic thing, but they just kept winning and winning. When I looked back I didn’t think it was him , I thought, ‘man he’s coming up the climb with me too, how do I get rid of this guy?’ I was really impressed, he did a fantastic job to do a ride like that for a guy his size.”
Horner also won King of the Mountain, and perhaps just as impressive, the Bend, Oregon, native single-handedly ended Symmetrics' hopes of a sweep after the locally based team won the first seven races of the $70,000 BC Superweek.
“They have a fantastic team. I hope they find a new sponsor because they have really put together a good team for Canadian cycling. All week they raced really tactically smart. It was a little frustrating for me because of how strong they are, but they come through with the win every time.”
Until Sunday, that is. But Pinfold said there was no shame in losing to Horner, who won three straight USA Cycling NRC Championships from 2002 to 2004 before going overseas.
“I’ve won this road race twice, but I don’t think I’ve ever gone up the hills as fast as I did having to follow those guys around,” said Pinfold, who also won the Tour de Delta Road Race a week earlier in a sprint. “I was starting to cramp a little bit and I’ve had a great week and to be in such great company, I was just happy to be there. These hills are good for me most of the time. There’s a speed above which I cannot go up them, but they’re just short enough that I can grunt myself over them and then I’m fine. The last few times, the hill was just coming too quickly.”
Pinfold finally got dropped on that final lap, finishing third behind Shriver, whose second place finish was also enough to edge Pinfold for the Tour de White Rock Omnium, the second-straight for the Jittery Joe's rider.
“I was just doing all I could to stay with Horner,” said Shriver, a Pocatello, Idaho, native who also finished second in the Tour de Delta criterium and overall a week earlier. “On the back stretch Chris was hitting it every time and I knew it was going to be down to that last lap and when it went just didn’t have it and came apart. I’m really excited to be up there with him, you try to dig really deep and find that extra gear inside yourself and every time I was hurting really bad — and even on some of the laps before I was really suffering — I just kept telling myself ‘you have to go to a harder gear. I was able to hang until last lap and just couldn’t do it anymore.”
Women's race
Things were a little easier in the women’s race, as New Zealand’s Lauren Ellis broke away midway through eight laps of the larger, 10-kilometer circuit, and never looked back. The 19-year-old finished in two hours, 44 minutes and 2 seconds — almost a full four minutes ahead of Australian Jazz Apple teammate Ruth Corset, who won a sprint to finish second and claim the Tour de White Rock’s Omnium.
Calgary’s Steph Roorda of Giant Bicycles/Team Whistler barely beat Sarah Bamberger of Cheerwine Pro Cycling for third place, leaving the San Francisco native to settle for the Queen of the Mountain award.
For Ellis, a two-time Junior World Championship individual pursuit medalist in her first year of road racing, the plan was originally to set up Corset for the Omnium. But that changed when she opened up a gap on the field.
“A group of us got a small break after the climb and we were just driving it and I just went to the front and drove it on the downhill and got a call from Susy [Pryde, Jazz Apple’s riding director] saying I’ve got a gap, and just drive it, drive it, drive it. So I went as hard as I could and got the gap. It wasn’t planned, but it’s great when you’ve got a gap and it sticks.”
With radio trouble making it hard to be sure how far out in front she was, Ellis never stopped driving, continuously improving on her big lead.
“[Not knowing] was hard but it just made me determined to drive it harder and harder,” said Ellis, New Zealand’s 2008 Elite Points Race Champion.
Corset’s ability to keep driving it was made all the more impressive by how she finished Friday night’s hillclimb — on her back being treated by medical staff after cramping and collapsing shortly after her second trip up the grueling 700-meter, 16 % grade ascent up from the beach.
“I went too hard the first climb,” said Corset, who was eight seconds faster than anyone else the first time up, then had to go up again, head to head with four other riders. “I went as hard as I could from the bottom and I shouldn’t have done that because my legs just seized up at the top. I couldn’t feel my legs at all, they just collapsed under me and spasmed, and cramped and I was in heaps of pain. My teammates massaged me that night and we did a recovery ride the next morning and I was fine.”
Corset recovered to finish second at the criterium on Saturday, losing a photo-finish sprint to Cheerwine’s Kelly Benjamin, and was right back at it on Sunday morning. The 31-year-old, in just her third year of competitive cycling, finished BC Superweek by adding to a total that already included the Tour de Delta Prologue and overall titles (and second in the road race and criterium there), as well as third place behind Benjamin and Canadian Olympian Gina Grain at the criteriums in both Gastown and Burnaby.
Not bad for a 31-year-old mother of two who is in just her third season of cycling — and on her first international tour with the developmental Jazz Apple Team led by Pryde, a two-time New Zealand Olympian.
“I didn’t expect to do that well, it’s been a really good week,” she said.
